Summer movies: the not-yet-seen and spoiler-heavy edition
I want to see Spiderman 2. Everyone keeps saying it’s great. It sounds like prime summer movie fare. It has Tobey Maguire, whom I liked a lot in Wonder Boys. It’s also not playing anywhere I can get to without a long bus ride. Harrumph.
Ditto for The Village, which I want to see even though the critics are giving it some very mixed reviews and I’m sometimes a wimp about scary movies. (I avoided seeing The Ring because even the trailers disturbed me. I kept looking nervously over my shoulder at the TV to make sure that nothing was crawling out of it.) If any of you, dear readers, have seen The Village, can you tell me in an unspoilerish way how scary it is? If it’s at approximately the same level of scariness as The Sixth Sense, which didn’t scare me too much,* then I can deal. Mixed reviews or no, I want to see if I can guess The Village‘s Big Plot Twist before it happens.
Speaking of movie endings that are supposed to be a big secret: if you haven’t read this compendium of movie endings revealed, you really should. Here’s a sample:
He discovers he’s a ghost.
He discovers she’s a guy.
His dad is Darth Vader.
She’s her sister and her mother.
He is Mother.
The baby’s father is Satan.
Al Pacino is Satan.
…
Kevin Spacey did it.
Kevin Spacey did it.
The blonde did it.
The person you think did it, did it.
All the passengers did it.
And the last one is an absolute classic.
* Except for that scene where the ghost girl’s arm shoots out from under the bed and grabs poor Haley Joel Osment’s ankle. Way to revive one of my worst childhood fears there, Mr. Shyamalan!
I want to see the Village, too, because (a) it looks scary (and you can’t get scary enough for me but btw, the Ring is not that scary) and (b) I’ve always thought Joaquin Phoenix was totally hot.
We’ve not seen Spidey 2 either. I was pulling for Catwoman and did the “you guys go on, then” when they all voted me down, so we saw neither. I try to gauge what’s big-screen $40 material for everyone and what’s $3.99 video later. 😉
I just saw The Village, and I didn’t think it was that scary because it’s so stupid. It sometimes uses music effectively in a scary way, but that is about it.
I figured out pretty much what was going on, at least enough so I wasn’t surprised.
A major disppointment compared to The Sixth Sense.
Aw, man. I’m so disappointed. It’s *time* for another scary movie.
Well, how do you define scary? I’ve never found monster or ghost stories to be scary, because they aren’t based on anything real. People are real and scary to me. In fact, the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is *Deliverance* and I don’t think it’s considered a “scary movie.” But backwoods, ignorant, redneck guys with no teeth who like sex with animals and give birth to albino, mentally-challenged banjo players? Yup, scary!
We saw “The Village” last weekend, and my wife, who is not big on scary movies, found it well within her comfort range. I’d say it is a movie about being scared, more than it is a scary movie, proper.
The reviews are mixed, for good reason, but it’s not stupid. A case can be made for reading it as a commentary on the tone of American life since 9/11, though not in too hamfisted a way.
I don’t like movies that fit your definition of scary, C. 😉 My preferred brand of scary is spooky, creepy, suspenseful and at least one jump-out-of-your-seat moment. I think the last scary movie I saw was The Others and even that didn’t carry a sustained scare-factor throughout but it did have a big build-up to the psychic scene. I never got the scare factor of Blair Witch at all. But I *was* scared in parts of the first Know What You Did Last Summer movie.
I may watch the Village just to see Joaquin Phoenix. 😉
I thought the creeping sense of dread that The Others had was absolutely terrific. Ringu was better than The Ring, although the end of The Ring nailed the terrible anti-altruistic sacrifice much better than the Japanese version. But, yeah, I love to be scared, and I’m looking forward to seeing The Village. One reviewer has mentioned an important episode of “shocking violence”, which I suppose will be the trademark Shyalaman moment. As far as Shyalaman goes: SIgns was disappointing, Unbreakable was underrated, and of course The Sixth Sense was wonderful. Mellow scary is cool by me, and it’s OK to know what’s gonna happen in advance — that’s the dread logic that the slasher flicks rely upon.